Intent.Entities.Repositories.Api

What This Module Does

Generates repository interfaces, unit of work contracts, and paging abstractions for your Domain model. It separates domain persistence concerns behind interfaces (e.g. IEntityRepository<T>), enabling infrastructure implementations (EF Core, DocumentDB, Dapr State, etc.) to be swapped without impacting domain or application layers.

Generated Artifacts

  • Entity repository interfaces (I[Entity]Repository) for each aggregate/root configured.
  • Generic repository contract (IRepository<T> or similar) for base constraints.
  • Paging abstractions: IPagedList<T> and ICursorPagedList<T> (cursor-based pagination) when selected.
  • Optional custom repository interfaces/classes (via Custom Repository templates).
  • IUnitOfWork interface for committing transactional changes.

Key Templates

  • EntityRepositoryInterface – per entity aggregation root; exposes query + persistence operations.
  • CustomRepositoryInterface / CustomRepository – opt-in extensibility for specialized access patterns.
  • RepositoryInterface – base contract type for common repository operations.
  • PagedListInterface / CursorPagedListInterface – paging result shapes.
  • UnitOfWorkInterface – abstraction for atomic persistence boundary.

Design Principles

  • Interface Segregation: Each entity gets its own repository interface to avoid large, catch-all interfaces.
  • Persistence Ignorance: Domain entities do not depend on specific persistence provider implementations.
  • Testability: Application services consume repository interfaces allowing in-memory or mocked implementations in tests.

Interoperability

The imodspec declares detection rules for provider modules (e.g. EF Core, Dapr State) to ensure minimum compatible versions are present before generation.

Typical Usage Flow

  1. Add persistence provider module (e.g. Intent.EntityFrameworkCore.Repositories).
  2. Add this module; generation produces repository interfaces in your Domain project.
  3. Provider module generates concrete implementations in Infrastructure layer satisfying these contracts.
  4. Application layer depends only on interfaces; provider swaps require no application changes.
  5. Unit of Work orchestrates commit semantics for grouped changes.

Customization Points

  • Partial classes on custom repositories allow adding bespoke queries.
  • Decorators/factory extensions referenced (CustomDbProviderFactoryExtension, CustomRepositoryMethodsExtension) can augment or inject methods.
  • Extend paging interfaces with additional metadata (e.g. total count, has next page) via merge mode.

When To Use

  • Any layered architecture requiring clean separation between domain logic and persistence specifics.
  • Need for multiple persistence providers (SQL, NoSQL) under uniform contracts.

When Not To Use

  • Extremely simple applications where direct DbContext usage is acceptable and repository abstraction adds overhead.
  • CQRS-only designs relying on direct projections without a repository pattern.
  • Intent.EntityFrameworkCore.Repositories
  • Intent.Dapr.AspNetCore.StateManagement
  • Application-level modules consuming repositories (e.g., CRUD handlers).